"Indeed it is," agreed the lady. "Oh, I can't thank you enough, sir!"

she said to Mr. Bobbsey. "I have told Sallie and Jane never to go out on the lake unless Frank is with them, but he isn't here now."

"Is Frank their brother?" asked Mr. Bobbsey.

"Not exactly a brother. My husband is his guardian," the lady went on.

"I am Mrs. Mason."

"Oh, I am glad to know you," said Mr. Bobbsey. "I am on my way to your husband's office now, to see him on business. I am glad I could do you a favor."

"Indeed it is more than a favor," said Mrs. Mason. "I cannot thank you enough. When Frank was home I did not worry so much about the girls, as he looked after them. But my husband thinks he is now old enough to help in the lumber yard, and so he keeps him down at the office. You are going down there, you say?"

"Yes," replied Mr. Bobbsey. "I am going along the river road."

"I can show you a shorter route," said Mrs. Mason, who now had tight hold of her daughters' hands, as though she feared they would run down to the boats again. "My husband has cut a new road through the orchard, down to his office," she went on. "You can come that way in your machine, and save nearly a mile."

"I shall be glad to do that," Mr. Bobbsey answered, "as I haven't very much time today. We are getting ready to go away."

Mrs. Mason showed Mr. Bobbsey where he could cross the main road, and take a short cut through an old orchard, to reach the lumber office, and soon, after waving good-bye to the frightened little girls, Mr.

Bobbsey, Bert and Freddie were again on their way.

"Is--is the lake very deep where those girls were?" Freddie wanted to know.

"It doesn't make much difference whether it is deep or not," said Mr.

Bobbsey, "they would probably have been drowned if they had fallen overboard. You must always be careful about boats," he cautioned the little fellow.

"I will," Freddie promised.

"That must be the lumber yard!" exclaimed Bert a little later, when they turned from the new orchard road into another highway.

"Yes, that is it," Mr. Bobbsey agreed. "I never came this way before.

It is a good road to know when you are in a hurry."

Mr. Mason's lumber yard, like that of Mr. Bobbsey, was partly on the edge of the lake, so the logs, boards and planks could be easily loaded and unloaded from boats. Part of the yard was on the other side of the road, back from the lake, and it was on this side that the office was built.

As Mr. Bobbsey and his two boys rode up in the automobile, they saw out in front of the office a strange and not very pleasant sight. A man stood there, roughly shaking a boy about Bert's age. The boy seemed to be crying, and trying to get away, but the man held him tightly by one arm, and shook him again and again.

"I don't like that," said Mr. Bobbsey in a low voice, as he stopped the automobile.

"What makes him do it?" asked Freddie. "Is the boy bad?"

"I'll teach you to make me lose money that way!" cried the man as he again roughly shook the boy. "You ought to have better sense than to be cheated that way! It wasn't your money that you lost, it was mine, and money isn't so easily made these days!"

"But I couldn't help it!" the boy cried, trying to pull his arm away.

He could not do this, for the man held it too tightly.

"Yes, you could help it too, if you'd had your eyes open!" the man said in harsh tones. "I left you in charge of the office, and you ought to have been sharp enough not to be fooled and cheated. I--I don't know what to do to you!"

Again he shook the boy.

"Ouch! You hurt, Mr. Mason!" cried the lad.

"Well, you deserve to be hurt, losing money that way," was the answer.

"I--I've a good notion to--"

But the sentence was not finished. Just then, by a sudden motion, the boy pulled away from the man who was shaking him, and ran down the road. For a moment it seemed as if the man would run after him, but he did not. The two stood looking at one another, while Mr. Bobbsey, having alighted from the automobile, walked up toward the lumber office.

"You'd better come back here, Frank," called the man who had been shaking the boy. "You'd better come back."

"I'll never come back!" was the answer. "I--I'm going to run away!

I'll never live with you again! You treat me too mean! It wasn't my fault about that bad money! I couldn't help it. I'm going to run away, and I'm never coming back again. I can't stand it here!"

Bursting into tears, the boy raced off down the road in a cloud of dust.

CHAPTER IV

OFF FOR MEADOW BROOK

Little Freddie, who sat beside his older brother, Bert, in Mr.

Bobbsey's automobile, looked on with wonder in his childish eyes, as he saw the boy Mr. Mason had been shaking run down the road.

"What's the matter with him, Bert?" Freddie asked. "Didn't he like to be shook?"

"I should say _not_!" exclaimed Bert "And I wouldn't myself. I don't think that man did right to shake him so."

"It was too bad," added Freddie. "Say, Bert," he went on eagerly, "maybe we could catch up to him in the automobile, and we could take him to Meadow Brook with us. n.o.body would shake him there."

"No, I guess they wouldn't," said Bert: slowly, thinking how kind his uncle and aunt were.

"Then let's go after him!" begged Freddie.

"No, we couldn't do that, Freddie," Bert said with a smile at his little brother. "The boy maybe wouldn't want to come with us, and besides, papa wouldn't let me run the auto, though I know which handles to turn, for I've watched him," Bert went on, with a firm belief that he could run the big car almost as well as could Mr.

Bobbsey.

"Well, when papa comes back I'm going to ask him to go after that boy and bring him with us," declared Freddie. "I don't like to see boys shook."

"I don't, either," murmured Bert.

By this time Mr. Bobbsey had come up to where Mr. Mason was standing.

"Oh, how do you do, Mr. Bobbsey," spoke the other lumber man. "I didn't expect to see you for some days."

"I did come a little ahead of time," went on the twins' father. "But I am going to take my family off to the country, so I thought I would come and see you, and finish up our business before going away."

"I'm always glad to talk business," Mr. Mason said, "but I thought your folks were out somewhere on a houseboat."